Without much fanfare, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced earlier this month via an Information Notice that it had to raise certain fees controlled by the SEC by 59 percent. “The fees that FINRA controls are staying flat,” a FINRA spokesperson tells FTF News. “Effective April 16, 2019, the Section 31 fee rate applicable… Read More >>
Asset Managers Must Disrupt Hiring Practices: Report
The disruptions rocking the securities industry — fee compression and consolidation, artificial intelligence, big data, analytics and social media — are rippling through the asset management sector and compelling many to reconsider hiring practices for core business functions. This is according to a report from Greenwich Associates, “Top Asset Management Talent Will Need to Evolve…… Read More >>
FinTech Lab Gets a Regulator-in-Residence
Maria T. Vullo, the former Superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), is the regulator-in-residence for the FinTech Innovation Lab New York and she will provide strategic counseling and mentorship to the companies in the lab. The lab, founded by Accenture and the Partnership Fund for New York City in 2010, focuses… Read More >>
ISITC Honors Genevy Dimitrion
The ISITC standards and best practices trade group has honored Genevy Dimitrion with its Standard of Excellence Award, rewarding the industry veteran for her long-time service to the organization, the industry, and for the many industry initiatives she has helped develop. The award was presented to Dimitrion at ISITC’s 25th Annual Securities Operations Summit in… Read More >>
Commerzbank & Deutsche Börse’s Successful DLT Experiment
It’s a challenge to predict how technologies will fare in the universe of securities operations. For instance, the hype around blockchain/distributed ledger technology (DLT) has been far outpacing the reality of DLT-based systems and applications in production at securities trading firms, causing some to wonder if there will ever be actual results. However, Commerzbank and… Read More >>
U.S. Institutional Investors Still Love ETFs
The love affair between U.S. institutional investors and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is showing no signs of slowing down. A new report “ETFs: U.S. Institutions’ New Tool of Choice for Portfolio Construction,” from market research firm Greenwich Associates finds that “institutional investments in ETFs increased significantly in the United States in 2018. Average allocations by institutions… Read More >>
Navigating Nervous Markets Without Clarity
To say the least, there is a great deal of nervousness about the economy and, particularly, the “R” word. If it’s any comfort, finding a clear consensus among economists about whether and when there might be an economic recession is mostly impossible as the results from a recent survey underscore. The survey in question is… Read More >>
Cast Your Vote in the FTF Awards Competition
It’s that time of year again when we unveil the nominations for the FTF News Technology Innovation Awards for 2019. We are proud to say that this year we have an assortment of new and established industry nominees that share a commitment to pursuing excellence in securities operations. It was a challenging process to review… Read More >>
CFTC Kept Watch During the Shutdown
One of the unknowns of the 35-day, partial federal government shutdown that ended on January 25 is what happens when the regulators aren’t looking. For the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), it “continued to perform essential market-critical functions throughout the shutdown,” says Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo in a statement issued on Jan. 28 when… Read More >>
FTF News & ISITC Extend Alliance
FTF News is happy to announce a big step for us and we hope a major boost to what we are providing to you — we will be the exclusive media partner for ISITC throughout 2019. As you know, the ISITC industry trade group has made a major commitment to foster standards and best practices… Read More >>
